Christianity and Peace-making
By the BISHOP OF BRADFORD (RT. REV. A. W. F. BLUNT)
[This article is the fifih in a series on " Christianity and Conduct." by Mr. Kenneth Ingram, who will write on " Christianity week THE Sermon on the ,Mount includes a_ blessing on " the peace-makers." It is certain that Christ meant by that more than a blessing on " Pacifists," if we use that term in its usual application to describe those people who declare an antipathy to all war and announce a determination to take no part in lighting. This may or may not be a valuable element in peace- making, but it is not the whole of it. To make peace is a constructive operation. History proves how difficult it is. Man has never found it hard to go to war, though it is encouraging to see that in these days an actual declaration of war is not so readily made as it used to be. But, again, the declaring and waging of war is only the last step in " war-making," which may be, and is only too assiduously, practised in the years before bellicose operations actually begin. For war and peace alike are more than the mere presence or absence of armed hostilities. They are -both dependent upon the presence or absence in individuals and nations of a certain attitude of mind, a certain temper of society, a certain quality of principles and direction of common conduct. It is very certain that we shall never enjoy settled peace until we have learnt bow to construct the fabric of a co-operative world. We make war so easily because we have ages of experience behind us in constructing the fabric of a competitive world.
To say- that the making of peace has been for nineteen hundred Years the ultimate social purpose of the Christian Church's efforts is only a seeming paradox. It is -a para- dox ; for many Christians have waged wars, many of them in the name of religion, and the Church has condoned many wars and encouraged or even prompted some. But the paradox is only seeming ; for if we realize that the main desire of the Church has always been to build up human character in Christlikeness, to build home life on the recognition of the sanctity of family ties, and to build the wider relations of mankind On the basis of common brotherhood under the fatherhood of God, we are bound to acknowledge that it has been actually at work on those things which constitute the very foundation of any stable peace-construction: That it has not always pursued this programme with con- tinuous enthusiasm, with complete consistency, or. with sufficient enlightenment, is as undeniable as that it has not pursued it with satisfactory success. In biblical It will be continued next and Sex Morality."] language we "see not yet all things put under Christ," and the power of sin has been and is at- work within the Church as well as outside. But nothing can rob. it of the credit of aiming at the very centre of the bull's eye, even if it has often been a poor marksinan. If the Church's influence could be so purified as to work with deeper .wisdom and more Christlike sincerity, and could be so strengthened as to be really dominant in human society, the main problem of peace-making would be much nearer to solution.
The present duty of the Church, therefore, is not to elm* the nature of its activities, but to widen its ideas of the sphere in which those activities must be exercised.. This enlargement of scope seems to me to be called for in two special directions : 1. The Church must gird itself to proclaim in Christ's name the definite outlawry of war, not merely on the score of its fatuity, its inhumanity, or its devilishness, but also on the ground of fundamental Christian principle, that, as the resolution of the Lambeth Conference of 1930 puts it, 'War as a method of settling international - disputes is incompatible with the teaching and example of Our Lord Jesus Christ.' We must reiterate this with entire conviction and with no shuffling as to its implica- tions. We must be whole-hearted in our support of all that may promote the abolition of war as a civilized method of international settlement. We must stand definitely against all adulterations of Christian principle by the indulgence of racial- or nationalist prejudices and bigotries, which so often arc. allowed to masquerade as Patriotism. The Church must dec!an itself a convinced adherent of the internationalist outlook and must call its members to cultivate the internationalist attitude of mind, labouring so to spread this disposition in the nation and, through the nation, in the world, that the managers of the political machinery will be forced to conform their conduct of affairs to this point of view. Our statesmen will never rise to a fully internationalist policy until they are subjected to the compulsion of a really internationalist conviction in the peoples who entrust them with the charge of their political fortunes and who eventually have to pay the bill for their political lollies or crimes.
2. The Church is called to busy. itself with the study and investigation of the moral and spiritual, principles inVolved. in :the present industrial; economic, and .social structure of the world. Any thoughtful Christian has to confess .to a ,profound uneasiness of -conscience, as he comes to realize how immorally and inhumanly the system of industrial and economic machinery seems . to work. The increasing, rationalization of industrial processes -forebodes the permanent existence (on present, arrange- ments) of- an enormous 'pool of unemr'oyed labour, with all its demoralizing and dehumani in effects on .the .unemplo.yed worker, and with its co ..stant 'menace to the stability • of society. The m.,ehine is palpably failing to do its job of providing work for all who want it and food for all who are ready to earn it. But, further than all this, the plain fact that Money, which man invented to be his servant, has become his master, and that the financial system has ceased to be a proper instrument of a .healthy and satisfactory world-economy, looks so much like an overt admission that we 'serve Mammon,' that any who believe the only receipt for a good world is to be found in `serving God' (interpreting that • phrase in the widest sense, as Christ meant it) must awake to the challenge which the present situation offers to the fundamentals of Christian morality and must be prepared to take it up. .Let it be .fully realized that Communism, as at present understood, offers no solution whatever. No mere readjustment of political and industrial factors from a soulless Capitalism to an equally soulless Communism will do more, than shift the incidence of the problem. Nothing will solve it, short of such a rearrangement. of economic machinery and social values as will .change society from an organization for purposes of production to an organization for purposes of human life. Here. I believe, we reach the very root of our problem and the innermost secret of our malaise. To deal adequately with it will require a supernatural degree of courage and wisdom. But the Church believes and has always ,believed in the accessibility of supernatural graco. It was by the power of that grace that it set out to Christianize individual life, home life, and the relations of men. to one another, according to its conception of the scope of its duty at that time. It will be but an enlargement. of its admitted duty to gird itself, to the Christianizing of international relations and of the economic basis of human society. If it goes forward in the power of God to this task, it will make in this time of human distress exactly the one contribution which will open to Mankind the path of deliverance.
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